City of Dark Corners by Jon Talton (novels to read .txt) 📗

needed the money. It didn’t hurt anybody. I don’t know why that’s a big deal. But after they suspended me, I stopped, and that’s the truth. Carrie never knew. She barely drank.”

We were high enough up to see over the rooftops of the town center and soon the college campus. The smoke of a steam locomotive trailed south, hauling a freight train through Tempe and toward Tucson.

I didn’t say anything more until we reached the summit. The view would have been great in normal circumstances. But the butte fell away from us, an unsettling drop. The whitewashed T was below us on the slope.

“It’s a long way down, kid.” I turned him to see. “I can take off these bracelets and give you a good shove. Maybe you’ll break your leg. Maybe you’ll break your neck. ‘Climbing accident,’ they’ll say. Nobody will ever know. You snap some bones, still alive for now, but you won’t be found for days. With no water, you’ll be as good as dead. So close to civilization you can see the lights of town and so damned far. Nobody can hear your cries for help. And with this warmer weather, maybe some rattlesnakes will think it’s time to wake up. And there you are.”

“Look, Mister, I never even made whoopee with her.” He was sweating. “She was straitlaced. At least I thought so. Way smarter than anybody else I knew. Beautiful. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to become a teacher somewhere. She had the train schedules out of town memorized.”

“But she broke up with you, why?”

“She didn’t say.”

“I heard she’d met an older man.”

“That’s what I heard, too.”

“Who was he?”

“I dunno!”

“Oh, bullshit. You had to have spied on her. It’s what I would have done.”

He was turning green and starting to hyperventilate, so I pulled him back and spun him to face me.

“If you get sick on my nice shoes, I’m going to toss you down the butte.”

After a few minutes, his color improved and he was breathing normally.

“I saw her with an older guy once. He picked her up. He was shorter than you, dark hair, wearing a suit. That’s all, I swear.”

“So she left you for him. Big man on campus made small by an adult taking your pretty girl. You saw her draped to be painted in art class, imagined what it would be like to get her totally naked, but somebody else did that. Must have made you angry.”

He looked toward the ground. “Sure, it did.”

“Angry enough to kill her?”

“What? Gosh, no! What happened to Carrie?”

“She’s dead.”

He looked sincerely gut-punched. I took off the handcuffs. Next I produced my sap.

“You know what this is?”

He shook his head.

“It’s a sap or a blackjack. Police carry them, but anybody can buy one.”

He stared at it, stared at me. “I don’t…”

“Take it.”

He hesitantly wrapped his hand around the heavy end. That’s not the way someone conversant in a sap would take it. He’d take the small end and whack me upside the head and I’d be the one rolled down the mountainside. It could be an act. I took it back and slipped it inside my waistband.

“Level with me, Tom. You got mad. You confronted her, things went bad, you hit her in the head with one of these. Teach the little bitch a lesson. You didn’t mean to kill her. But that’s how it went, right? What happened next?”

He rubbed his wrists. “You’re all wrong.” Seeing his hands were free, he realized that might not have been a compassionate gesture, and I might be ready to give the big shove. He knelt down on the dirt. “I’m afraid of heights! You gotta believe me, Mister. If Carrie’s dead, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Not a thing? I don’t believe you. Maybe you had a buddy help…”

“No!” He looked pleadingly at me.

“You work at the slaughterhouse, right?”

“Sure, so?”

“So why do you have a job when so many adult men can’t find work to provide for their families?”

“My uncle works at Tovrea.” That was the big feedlot and slaughterhouse operation. “He got me part-time work. Between that and my football scholarship, it’s the only way I can stay in school. My dad lost nearly everything in ’29. Stocks, you know. Then the building and loan where he was an officer closed. He hasn’t been able to find a steady job since then.”

It was a good story, if true. I continued: “You know how to cut meat. That would come in handy if you hit Carrie in the head, accidentally killed her, and wanted to make it look like her body fell from a train…”

“What? I don’t know what you’re saying. I never fought with her, never hit her. My mom taught me to never hit a girl.”

I forced him all the way down on his butt. His eyes darted around, looking for snakes while I took in the view. From up here, even a slight breeze made a noise. So did Tom, continuing his denials.

I demanded: “What kind of car do you own?”

“I don’t,” he said. “Who has the money? I have to hitchhike to work.”

If I were still a real cop, I could take my time with him in the interrogation room. But I didn’t have that luxury. I was hoping the stress of suddenly being kidnapped and frog-marched up Tempe Butte might have the same effect in less time.

“I’ve got your parents’ address in Phoenix,” I said. “Are you telling me that if I get a search warrant and go there, I’m not going to find the place you cut her up? I’ll find the bloodstains. That’s evidence. I’ll find the butcher tools you used to hack her apart, and where you got the clothes to dress her again. That’s premeditation. Her breaking up with you is motive. Quick conviction, and you’ll hang, Tom. It’s not looking good. But if you level with me, maybe the jury will go easier. Crime of passion.”

Now the husky football player was red-faced